Re: [gtk-list] Re: 1.1 <=> 1.2 not compatible, why not 2.0?

[Marc van Kempen <marc bowtie nl>]

> On Fri, 26 Mar 1999 11:03:01 +0100, Marc van Kempen <marc@bowtie.nl> wrote:
> 
> >> Irrespective of the technical question (which is fairly easily answered),
> >> the point that I assume Marc is making here is that it is absolutley vital
> >> that upgrading gtk does not break existing gtk binaries. He's right - this
> >> is an total show stopper. Nobody is going to use gtk if they can't be sure
> >> of that. Just look at the way GTK1.2 has been flamed for breaking 1.0
> >> binaries.
> >> 
> > That is not what I meant.
> >
> > You cannot always avoid breaking binary compatibility, and gtk+ 1.0 was 
> > a first release, much has improved since then. However, in order to handle
> > this binary breakage, the shared library version numbers must be set
> > accordingly. For gtk+ 1.2 this would mean that it has to have a different 
> > major version number than gtk+ 1.0!
> 
> By 'upgrading gtk' I mean a user or sytems manager upgrading gtk on their
> system. There is no way anybody is going to have 30+ gtk packages installed
> on their system if upgrading one of them means installing a gtk shared
> library which causes the rest of them to stop working. 
> 
> Is this news to anybody?
> 

It has bitten me too, but in a different form. On FreeBSD, version 2.2.6, 
versions after 3.0 are ELF and don't have the problem explained below,
when I compile gtk apps, I can't link against libgtk.so, because the 
dynamic linker expects libgtk.so.x.y, so instead it links against the 
static library.

I have "solved" this by explicitely linking against libgtk-1.2.so.x.y, by
using -lgtk-1.2 on the commandline (I have modified gtk-config for that).

Had the gtk people used normal shared library conventions this problem 
would have never arised.


> The major number convention is designed to deal with that. Thus, if a new
> version of gtk would otherwise break existing *binaries* already installed
> on the system it has to have a new version number so it doesn't.
> 
> I'm sure we're all aware of the fact that gtk being in its early release
> stages means there are bound to be a few wobbles. And, as we all seem to
> agree, development releases can do what they like as long as they don't
> break stable releases with the same major number and smaller minor numbers.
> 
> I assume that in fact we are in agreement?
> 

We definitely are! I hope some gtk people are listening to this, and maybe
they can even comment upon it.

Marc.

----------------------------------------------------
Marc van Kempen                 BowTie Technology     
Email: marc@bowtie.nl            WWW & Databases
tel. +31 40 2 43 20 65         
fax. +31 40 2 44 21 86         http://www.bowtie.nl
----------------------------------------------------